Miami-Dade mayor's legal battle against recall effort delayed

MIAMI — Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez is not going down without a fight. His lawyers were in court Friday to fight billionaire Norman Braman's recall effort.

Their main weapon of defense lays in a procedural technicality, but they will have to wait until Dec. 1st. Judge Israel Reyes held a brief hearing and postponed the process Friday.

The battle began after a series of controversial county employee pay raises and cuts enraged Miami-Dade residents.

About 112,000 residents backed Braman's petition to recall Alvarez.

In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, Alvarez alleges the Oct. 6 letter from the Miami-Dade Clerk of Courts approving the petition that cleared the way for recall signatures to be gathered was improperly signed.

Specifically, that the letter was signed by Diane Collins, a deputy clerk, rather than Clerk of Courts Harvey Ruvin.

``Approval by a `deputy clerk' violates the Charter,'' contends the lawsuit filed by Alvarez attorney Bruce Rogow. It asks that a judge declare all the signatures null and void.

A legal challenge to the recall has long been expected, but the particular claim in the suit was a surprise, in part, because Alvarez's petition drive for strong mayor powers was approved in 2005 by a letter signed by a deputy clerk as well.

``The mayor is consistent,'' said Norman Braman, the billionaire businessman leading the recall campaign, who unsuccessfully sued in 2008 to get a referendum on whether public dollars should be used to pay for a Florida Marlins ball park. ``He always seeks to prevent the voters from making a decision. He did it with baseball, and now he is doing it with his own job.''

Both Braman and Ruvin are named as defendants in the lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.

``The letter approving the form of petition was from me, as the clerk of the circuit court,'' Ruvin said, asserting the petitions were properly approved. ``Diane, as my deputy and under my direction, signed on my behalf.''

Rogow responded that the literal reading of the charter ``does not say Clerk or someone at his behest.''

To the point that a deputy clerk signed Alvarez's petition drive letter in 2005, Rogow said: ``It's too late to raise that issue.''